Visa agents in Vientiane Laos

[willyumiii]

Are Visa agents still available in Vientiane Laos?

I have read conflicting posts about this recently on TV.

If they are available, do you know what the charge is for the service?

I need to go and gt a new Non B visa soon and would prefer to hire an agent.

[CharlieH]

MOVED TO VISA FORUM

[eaglesflight]

Yes there are but you now need to hand in your application in person, and pick up your passport the next day too. In other words, all the agents can do for you in Vientiane is to fill in your forms (some of them don't even want to do this because the consulate staff may recognise their awful handwriting) and procure you a spot at the front of the queue on the morning that you hand in your application.

To be honest, the only service that's worth paying for is to get a spot at the head of the queue but you'll probably need to turn up the night before to find someone to do that for you. I would advise shopping around rather than accepting the first price you are quoted if you do want to use an agent. in my experience, their prices vary by quite a bit (or at least their initial quotes do).

Edited June 3, 2015 by eaglesflight

[Maestro]

Removed an off-topic post.

[visarunner]

No need to use agent, they can not help.

Just avoid the crowd on Monday n Thursday.

Go to Embassy on Tuesday or Wednesday

[eaglesflight]

I had to go on a Thursday so I used one and he saved me perhaps 2 hours sitting around on application day, plus however long I would have to have sat around waiting to get my passport back the next day. However, If you can go on a Tuesday or Wednesday, it's definitely a better idea now, given how little the agents can actually do for you in Vientiane.

[Kitsune]

Getting the passport back never took me more than 15 minutes.

The only real point of this would be the application queue.

Could you say how much you paid for this?

Thanks

[eaglesflight]

It took nearly 10 minutes for me to get my passport back and I had queue no.9. They process them in the same order as you apply nowadays, at just one of the same windows that they use for applications. I was only there while they called up numbers 1 to 10 to wait in line and they were going quite slowly. Unless they sped up the process considerably after I left, I could see it taking a long time for somebody with ticket number 200 or so to get their passport back.

Re. the fee, it worked out around 1500. It's much more than I wanted to pay and I think it was an unreasonable amount but I guess the time I saved on both days, together with the fact I didn't have to stand in the sun when waiting to get in, as those further back in the queue did, made it worthwhile.

What annoyed me about the price is that one year ago, I got everything done for 1,200 baht. All I did was hand the agent my passport and two photos and he gave it back to me the next afternoon when they opened for collections. Unfortunately, I lost that agent's number and had to use another one. My advice would be to avoid Mondays and Thursdays, as someone else suggested above, and do it yourself. What an agent can do for you in Vientiane nowadays is so minimal that anything over a few hundred baht seems a little high.

As a comparison, when they changed the ED visa system around six months or so back, my school here in Chiang Mai suddenly decided they couldn't be bothered to offer the visa assistance service they had promised when I started lessons and that I would have to queue up at 5am myself to apply for an extension. They did however, offer to pay someone else to queue for me at a cost of 500 baht.

Edited June 4, 2015 by eaglesflight

[Kitsune]

1500 to jump the queue is a bit steep indeed.

[HooHaa]

op should fly to penang, never set foot in emabassy. look up jim on chulia street, he works miracles.

[eaglesflight]

1500 to jump the queue is a bit steep indeed.

Yes, it is. The guy got me 400 baht a night off the walk-in rate for the hotel I stayed in (I know this because I stayed there before at the walk-in rate), which made it a little easier to stomach but given the fact you have to apply yourself, it's not a great service. I'd probably pay it again, if I absolutely couldn't avoid applying on a Monday or Thursday, to save myself 3-4 hours in the heat but I'd much rather go on a different day and not overpay for such a service.

Edited June 5, 2015 by eaglesflight